Hidden for many years, the sign for Stockton Co-operative Branch No.8 can be seen once more. Located on the corner of Holly Street and the High Street, Norton, 2014.
Photographs and details courtesy of David Thompson.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
The shop can be seen in it’s prime , here in a previous post and no doubt as Frank remembers it ; https://picturestocktonarchive.wordpress.com/2006/08/10/norton-co-op/ . I was allowed to look around inside but very little remains of it’s original features except for the white glazed bricks and a very large cellar .
David, Not quite as old as those pictures though it remained very little changed until after the war. In a large Supermarket last week looking at everything pre-packed and needing a tool box to get into the food it made me think of the times when everything came in big tubs sacks or wooden boxes. Although we had a soft farm cheese I loved a cut off the big block on the counter because we could toast it, put a slice of bread toasted in front of the open fire on a plate then stick a fork in the cheese and toast it over the bread, it would melt and drip down eventually covering the bread and then some brown sauce and a feast. Now there is a thought, plenty of brown sauces during the war not much tomato, we were told the tomato’s came from Italy.
All loose goods carefully weighed packaged and put in your basket, it gave you a sense of they the assistants cared as they read the list and served only you today it is shot through the check out faster than we can pack you can feel the temperature rise in the queue behind if you do not keep up or miss hit your pin, what ever happened to patience I ask.
Frank good comment when I worked at Number 1 branch of the Coop we were taught to give respect to customers and the staff wanted and enjoyed being there . We had to use our legs to get things for the customers and we also had to use our brains to total up their lists ( not a calculator is sight) , it taught us that the customer was not too bad after all. When I was last in Stockton both my wife and I were shopping and we stood at one shop counter for ages before one of the two girls decided to interrupt their conversation to serve us. I often think what would the air be like if an old co-op manager was behind them.
Keep up with good stories Frank its good to remember the good times.
Keith not all good times more good for some. Remembering those times as they were by those of us who lived them is different to hankering after them as some do, nothing must change although it changes quite rapidly during our life times. My children and grandchildren have never known what it was like to have no bathroom as such, no central heating, or coal fires that smoked and fired rock shrapnel at you if you left the guard off and gas lighting though I did love that.
Would I go back? most certainly no, do I welcome change it depends though who amongst us can stop it. We did welcome the new Supermarket type store, take your time pick and choose no waiting for an assistant to come free, we were very patient queuing then we still queued to check out, there was always going to be queues somewhere.
School friends with no shoes on their feet and ragged clothes, often no food in the tummy, for some it was never good times, others of us had it all compared with them. Now it is more equal, just different sized TV’s Laptops Phones and I-pods, take away food and who cares about the rent. That is how it looks to me from my ivory castle in my comfortable retirement, to those people though it is depredation.
The old ways were often nice for those on the receiving end was it good for those serving, as with all work some of us enjoyed what we did others moaned, that is life, rose coloured specs not included.
Thank you Frank and Malcolm for taking me back 70 years to my childhood and reliving my time in Thornaby with 2 co-ops stores to shop, one in Havelock Street one in George Street. Woe betide me if I forgot the divi number but we could not – it’s etched in my brain.
Norton’s supermarket before they were invented. Norton High Street had a wonderful mix of shops although the Co-op was the biggest and best. Mother would often send me down for the basics a shopping list which would be handed to the assistant, always polite even to young cheeky lads like me. Each item would be weighed packeted and put in my basket I can still see the list, Pearl Barley, Split peas, Dried beans ,lentils, for the home made soups made from our own meat and vegetables. Flour, Yeast for the home made bread, twice a week and of course the pies cakes and puddings. Sometimes if we were out of the farm butter she would add that to the list. A huge block would be on the counter a piece cut out and then with two wooden paddles knocked into a perfect square with a pattern on it, fascinating to watch and then possibly a piece off the hard cheese also sitting on the counter, I loved the aroma.
You could buy almost anything including the paraffin for lamps or stoves, candles, hard soap which I would grate down into flakes for the weekly wash with the blue bags and the tablet soap for personal washes and bathing Sunlight, it made your eyes water I can tell you.
The list would also have Oats on it for the daily porridge, Aunt Mabel had a porridge drawer, ours went into a large iron pot that hung over the damped down fire all night with enough water to cover it, next morning it went into a pan on the gas stove with more water and when ready add milk and sugar, that was every day for the first years of my life followed by home cured bacon fried bread and what ever else was in season if you believe the dietary experts I should have died years ago what do they know and a better question where are they now?
People bemoan the fact Stockton High Street is a shadow of its former self well Norton although it still has shops was a mecca in my day with the Co-op top of the list and yes I still remember the number, you never forgot like those memories of Norton High Street in its hey day, long gone apart from the pictures conjured up by Picture Stockton, they make me nostalgic.
A wonderful picture, Frank, shared by many of us “end-of-the-war babies.” Thank you for the clarity. Domestic life and household duties, especially before starting school, was largely a question of where you fit in the birth-order, and above all, whether you were male or female. Aspects of juvenile life were, like your half-pound of butter from the “Store,” square in shape; and if they happened to a bit wonky in parts, they were pretty soon squared off for you by a parental hand. Going on errands (20 Player’s for Dad; 10 Woodbines for Mum, the Daily Express, a large, white loaf daily, plus whatever else was needed, all written on the note, which wrapped the money and was handed to whomever was at the counter for fulfillment) was the role of the eldest boy, until he reached grammar school age. Then it fell to the next male progeny. I don’t recall girls having to do that, presumably out of fear of their being snatched by a “funny fella” lurking in the bushes on Roseberry Road.
For my mother, retailers in those “corner shop” general stores were the enemy. Every time bread or tea or cigs went up by a penny, she saw it as Ebenezer Scrooge squeezing the life-blood out of honest, hard-working folk; I think she had an image of Mrs. Anderson, who ran the grocery shop across the street from us, opening a huge trunk every night, tipping in the day’s takings and basking in the shimmering light from the quantities of silver therein! (see also the story of “Greedy Alice” in the Wolviston Road entry.)
On the other hand, the “Store” was a benevolent institution, of which all were shareholders, therefore all benefitted, in her view. As Frank relates, the grocery counter appeared to these postwar infant eyes as manifest abundance, especially as you say, that freshly-opened, three-stone hunk of butter, shaped like the cask it came in. It’s also an interesting observation he makes, of how polite the assistants there were. Courtesy was not endemic in retail, especially to those of us under four feet tall, after the war. Far from “Can I help you?,” the standard greeting was “Yes?,” if not “What d’you want?” Singer George Melly, in his wonderful autobiography, “Owning Up,” refers to his dislike of Birmingham as a venue in the 60s, by painting all retail staff there as wearing an expression that still said “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”
I can only surmise that (since it’s my own professional speciality) an early form of customer-service training made assistants aware that the customer was their bread-and-butter, so to be abrasive to none. Good for them.
Being a boy pre-war and during the war we did see a rather different picture to you in the fact with rationing you did not upset the person serving just in case there was some little extra under the counter, the assistants were still very polite and in a time of queueing made sure you were served in turn.
One such memory was Sparks shop in the High Street would get in a few dozen iced coconut cakes, coconut and rice were never rationed for some reason, we would queue patiently counting down, would we get one or not. Then in came a Lady well known in the village straight to the front, “I want that cake” a ruckus breaks out and in the end they give her a cake to stop it she walks out smiling and the moans began. Such was the daily shop for our Mothers or when they went out to war work to us lads. We made our own bread the wartime stuff was a funny colour and we had no idea what was in it, it was never rationed until after the war and then it too was rationed when America cut off all aid.
We boys and girls had a freedom during the war which was probably unique, parents on war work or away in the forces left us kids to our own resources, a couple of sandwiches and a bottle of water we disappeared down the beck over the willowgarth or the Show field, skinny dipped in the beck boys and girls we thought nothing of it, we were just kids playing, we were told to keep away from any tramps or old men but never saw any of those bogeymen, Roseberry road at the time only had a dozen houses the biggest owned by Mr Edwards Head Master of the William Newton School, his son and daughter Bruce and Ruth were part of our gang
Wartime for us kids was certainly not all doom and gloom, we had the pictures youth movements most of us were in the Army Cadets, we played every sport in season and were never off our bikes or roller skates, most of the bikes arrived Christmas 1939, I think our parents who had already gone through one war decided we would not lose out. My bike was a Hercules and cost £4/19/6 I would think a small fortune back then.
Yes we had bombing long nights in the shelters followed by a normal day at school, you could not sneak in to assembly late and say we were up half the night, six of the best you do not make excuses it is the same for all, we learnt the lesson.
Norton at that time was a vibrant place to be I can think of seven Butchers shops at one time and just about every other need furnished apart from clothes and furniture, not that we got much of either, clothes rationing saw to that and furniture makers were busy making Planes.
I would not wish any of it on my Children or Grandchildren yet would not have missed any of it, living for the day seemed to intensify the fun of it all, we let the grown ups do the worrying.